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Tamurkhan
Tamurkhan, known also as the Maggot Lord, the Son of the Great Kurgan and the Favored of Nurgle, was once one of the greatest Champion of Nurgle in recent history. Numerous legends and lies have clustered about Tamurkhan long before he had gathered his great horde, and in his fulfillment of a prophecy, struck out like a poisoned talon at the wider world beyond the Chaos Wastes. Some tales speak of him to be the millennia-old scion of the Great Kurgan, one of four sons, mighty and terrible, who each set out to the four winds to conquer in the service of the four great powers of Chaos. Others had it that he was no more than a vermin once — a corpse-canker grown fat and clever on the spoiled entrails of the battlefield, swelled up and tranfigured in the basking light of the Eternal Battle in the uttermost north. In either case he was an arrogant, savage and monstrous warlord, and a true reveler in decay and death, fated as one of Father Nurgle's most favored children for the carnage and suffering he had wracked in his god's name. As the leader of a decaying warband of fanatical acolytes and twisted monstrosities and riding upon his mighty mount, Bubebolos the Toad Dragon, Tamurkhan carved a bloody path for himself on the road to victory, amassing around him a great host in his master's name. History The history of Tamurkhan began to the far north, as all such sagas of Chaos often begin. In the Year of the Crow in the sixth reign of the Black Moon, by Norscan reckoning, the never-ending temptest that crowns the storm that is known to men as the Realm of Chaos waxed gibbous and grasping. All across the north lands the earth shifted and moaned as if it were a sleeper beset by nightmares; battle-graves vomited forth their unquiet dead, and she-beast and mortal woman alike were greatly blessed with the taint of Chaos in their birthings. All men knew that a time of great portents was at hand, and rumours spread like grassland fires of sundered prisons and baleful visitations, of great monsters bestirred from their slumbers in the caves and mires of the wastes, and of sorceresses leaping eager into the minds of those with the wit to seize them. War was coming, as it had countless times before and would do so countless times again — red war the likes of which every Northman be they Dolgan, Chi-An or Kharzag feels the calling of in their bones and cannot resist. War at the pleasure of the Chaos Gods. With the call to battle tugging at their minds and souls, some wasted no time in falling first upon their own, striving in bloody combat to prove their worth before their tribe and their gods for the battles to come. Others, tormented by dreams and visions, quested alone, travelling ever northward to where the world itself was ripped apart. Of these dark pilgrims, some found paths to bleak and nightmarish shrines where they came to claim a blessing and pledge theitillegiance to one of the Great Powers, while many merely found death. Feeling the breach of Chaos at their neck and hearing its honeyed whispers of promises of their ascendancy and destruction in equal measure, many exalted champions and would-be warlords across the north lands bestirred themselves for battle. For some the prospect of fighting familiar foes and settling ancient feuds was enough to call on their savagery and spur them to action alone, while others, superstitious and pious in their dark religion sought the favour of the gods by divining prophecies and the calling of daemonic summonings for lore and guidance as to where their blow should fall. Fickle and contradictory are the gods of Chaos, and treacherous their daemon-kin. For each visitation and augury was a different answer given, and for each a different path to glory illuminated. Yet within this cacophony of maddening lies, lick-spittle-truths and burning secrets, there were names and whispers that reverberated and echoed 'rime and again to some — of The Everchosen Yet to Rise, of Zanbaijin, the Fallen City, the Serpent's Moon and the Dead Grail, of the Kingdom of Fire and Ash, and of the Throne of Chaos of undying dominion over the mortal world in daemon's flesh — a prize 'ripe for the taking. So it came to pass in the Kurgan lands where the legend of the blasted plateau of K'datha and the ancient ruins of Zanbaijin that surmounted it were well known, that many warlords and mighty Champions of Chaos were drawn to quest for its cold heights. Although said to exist somewhere to the east, the K'datha was known to shift and wane like a mirage on the horizon, and an unfavoured warrior might be driven mad or starve without ever reaching it, though it hovered on the horizon before them. But as the Realm of Chaos waxed in power, the great plateau of blasta K'datha lay open for any that would dare climb the razor-sharp rocks of its passes to give battle in the shadow of the ancient ruins. Death at K'datha Zanbaijin — the Fallen City was older than Man, and had long served as an arena where the Chaos Gods watched their mortal followers vie for their favour in violent conflict. When the Champions and their armies came to battle here, each one hoped to prove their worth and the superiority of their patron over all others. A Champion who was a victor here would be marked for greatness, and by ancient tradition became master of those they vanquished. The fame of such a warlord would spread throughout the Northern Wastes, and many would flock to their banner in promise of the glories to come. Eventually three mighty armies came to make war in the shadow of the timeless twisted pillars of Zanbaijin. First from the west came the brazen-armoured warriors of Hakka the Aesling, his axe-men drawn up in brutal column, each accompanied by packs of blood-crazed Gore-spawn and flayed hounds snapping at their leashes. From the east came Sargath the Vain, horse-lord of the Yurtsak, at whose bequest the paramours of Slaanesh had given themselves up to his service. From the south came the witch-cabal of Urak Soulbane, Arch-Sorcerer and daemon-priest, at whose beckoning the earth and rocks themselves spat forth twisted killing shapes, and above whose head vultures whirled on wings of flame. Although comparably few compared to the other greater forces, the witch-cult was deadly, and its fanatic acolytes and sorcerers could match many times their own numbers in combat. Soon battle was joined and the slaughter was great. By spell and sword, fanged maw and burning talon, lives were claimed and blood was shed in profusion for the god's pleasure. The dead plazas of the fallen city echoed once more to the song of steel and the piteous cries of the dying. Hour after hour, day after day the forces clashed and parted in the heartbeat rhythm of war. Of the three forces, none gained the upper hand, for while the fury of Hakka's berserkers was unsurpassed, it was countered by the numbers of Sargath's vast host, who spitted themselves on their foe blades in unholy bliss and dragged them down, only to be beaten back from victory in turn by the scouring hellfire of Urak's striking when triumph seemed assured. Each force grew more desperate for victory as the bodies stacked deep in the cold dust and the moons passed overhead, and a great tumult of baleful light caught hold in the skies above K'datha, both as a sign of the gods' pleasure and as a beacon to draw in others with the promise of glory like moths to a flame. The fighting ran on unabated, and soon where thousands had battled before, tens of thousand's now flocked to join the conflict, both swelling the armies of the mighty champions with scores of Chaos warlords, hungering creatures of Chaos and hordes of Chaos warriors. When the moon of Mannslieb died in the east, and the Black Moon, Morrslieb, rose in the ascendancy, another host appeared on the horizon carrying with it a great miasma of shadow and pestilence. It had begun as a flood of distorted, nightmarish things, dredged up from the depths of Cold Mires, hungering Bile Trolls, worm-men, and hideous nameless things dripping rot and slime. At the head of this monstrous horde was a rotted yet living cadaver astride a mighty Toad Dragon, a cadaver that called itself Tamurkhan the Maggot Lord, servant of the God of Peslience and father of all Diseases; Nurgle. Onslaught of the Maggot Lord Like the other Chaos warlords, Tamurkhan had been drawn to K'datha by the promises of power beyond mortal imagining. But from the beginning, he amongst the four had been marked for glory by his patron god. As Tamurkhan had set out from his foetid lair, Nurgle himself had sent forth a dark and noxious storm that howled and screamed before the rancid column of beasts and half-men he commanded, carrying the certain promise of death and ruin to those that stop them. Whilst the moon had dwindled in the night sky, the horde of Tamurkhan wound ever westward towards blasted K'datha where battle already raged. Drawn in his wake were many fierce warriors who owed fealty to the corrupt Father of Plagues, heedless of loyalty to tribe or warband, so highly blessed in Father Nurgle's favour Tamurkhan clearly was. From all the domains of the north lands, champions of decay clamoured to the cavalcade of their new master and soon names already legend for the desolation they had wrought such as Kayzk the Befouled, master of an order of corrupt and rotted Chaos Knights, and the dragon-rider, Orthbal Vipergut, came to pledge to him their filth-stained blades in allegiance. With every great warrior of renown came also a host of lesser fighters, tribesmen and sub-human dregs in profusion. Such was the scale of this gathering that the Northlands were nearly emptied of its inhabitants. Most of those who rallied to the ragged banners of Nurgle were already marked by the favors of their patron lord and some were so corrupted by disease and disfigurement, they were barely recognizable as being even human. Tamurkhan's coming to blasted K'datha was heralded by dark signs and portents, and even as his mouldering host mounted the passes to the plateau, the dead of battle that littered fallen Zanbaijin started to shudder and seethe with unholy life. This phenomenon is not the workings of dark necromancy, but by huge, bloated carrion flies that had begun to breed and multiple within the organs of the dead and dying. The juddering corpses now burst forth in a hateful, biting swarm to cloud the skies in sickly clouds and fill the fallen city with their murmurous wing-beats. With this foul omen at hand, the witch-cult of Urak Soulbane, Acarnist of Tzeentch, fled Zanbaijin, spitting burning curses as they left, their master having divined of doom should they decide to stay and fight. For the bitter rivals, Sargath and Hakka, the arrival of this horde did not persuade them to give up the fight, even when the swarms of biting flies began to devour the entire city. So it was that Tamurkkan's plague-ridden host fell upon the two greater armies as they were already engaged in bloody battle for the wide plaza at the center of the dead city. The slaughter was great and swiftly many of the minor warbands were crushed or driven from the field in disarray. Those not trapped between warring factions or blinded by bloodlust took to flight rather than risk overwhelming destruction. Only Sargath and Hakka's force fought on unbowed. At the height of the battle the skies were rent open and foul, caustic rain fell in great sheets. At the tainted rain's touch the flesh of the dead petrified and ran like melting wax, and open wounds festered as the vanguard of the three great warlords met in battle at the plaza's center. The proud and vicious steeds of the Yurtsak marauders were soon miredas obscene tendrils of rancid liquid rose up to drown them in a horrific massacre as the horde of Tamurkhan smashed into their flank with shattering force. The embattled combatants turned and counter-attacked this new enemy. Sargath's sworn sorcerers responded with twisting enchantments of their own, searing the oncoming plague-beasts with waves of coruscating energy, blinding and misleading its warriors with murderous illusions. But all was in vain as the disordered lines of Sargath's marauders and cavalry — caught in place and robbed of the advantage of mobility — crumbled before the implacable tide of rot and terror before them, while Sargath's most powerful troops, his mutant Forsaken, were caught between the onslaught of Kayzk the Befouled's Chaos knights on one side and the frenzied flayed-hounds of Hakka's forces who had been driven utterly insane by the corrosive rain and devouring flies, on the other. Seeing the tide of battle turned against him, Sargath, his pride stung and his rage uncontrollable at the prospect of defeat, charged his own bodyguard of Chaos knights at the heart of Tamurkhan's forces, calling for the head of the one who had so insulted him with the presumption of the attack on Slaanesh's favoured son. His white-enamelled armour splattered with blood and unmentionable filth, Sargath, whose blade-skill was legend, hacked and slew his way to face his new enemy. With his narrow rune-blade slicing through rusted armour and decayed neck alike, he carved his way to face Tamurkhan directly. Arrogant and scorning the forces that surrounded him, Sargath, Prince of Chaos poured insults upon the withered figure that slumped bonelessly atop the vast hulking beast before him. The Toad Dragon Bubebolos was the size of a tower house, its armored bulk already shredded and scratched with dozens of wounds that had done nothing to stop its rampage. The rotted figure atop the monster spat back its own taunts in reply, and at the slightest gesture of command, Bubebolos reared up and opened its vast and reeking maw wide. Triumph of Tamurkhan But even as the Toad Dragon unleashed a blast of unspeakable foulness from its gaping mouth, the inhumanly lithe Sargath leapt from the back of his Chaos steed and high into the air, as a mere instant later, his former mount was liquefied into screaming, necrotic ooze. Sargath's leap took him to the very head of the beast itself, landing upon one of its horns even as his once-white armour became rusted with the backwash of Bubebolos' vile breath. With a cry of triumph Sargath swung himself upwards at the Toad Dragon's rider, and with the speed of a striking serpent sunk his rune blade deep into Tamurkhan's heart. Tamurkhan merely laughed and Sargath's howl of triumph was cut short, as the withered cadaver before him squirmed, bulged and split open like a bloated fruit, and Tamurkhan's true form was revealed. A infant-sized maggot, streaked with greyish slime, leaped into the throat of Sargath and ripped itself deep into his body. The maggot's fatted body writhed and twisted obscenely as it pushed its way behind Sargath's rib cage which splintered and cracked, the maggot-thing devouring and boring ever deeper into the living organs within. The Champion of Slaanesh's body fell limply into the foetid mire of the battlefield, and when it rose again, Bubebolos bellowed in deafening exaltation and the servants of decay gibbered and capered in bleak joy, as Tamurkhan, reborn with his latest body, mounted again on his war beast. The heart ripped from them by their master's defeat, Sargath's marauders fell into full and panicked retreat and hundreds were cut down, caught between the braying madmen of Tamurkhan's forces, freshly invigorated by their master's triumph, and the tireless blades of the Aesling's blood-worshippers at their backs. Many hundreds more escaped, calling upon their god for deliverance, fleeing down the crazed and pillared paths of the fallen city and becoming swallowed up by the labyrinth. Hakka himself, now vastly outnumbered and out-matched committed his own soul and the souls of his followers to Khorne, and hurled himself and his bodyguard into the thick of Tamurkhan's bestial vanguard. At this sundering charge of savage fury, the battle-line of Nurgle's children wavered but did not break, and as the weight of the forces against them pressed harder, Hakka the Aesling was swept away from his own warriors, and despite the whirlwind fury of his twin-axes, he was soon torn apart by the grasping claws of Bile Trolls, his body so shredded and devoured that no part of him could be found for trophy after the battle. With victory in Tamurkhan's grasp, the skies were rent with sickly green lightning and the foul rain fell in a great downpour; tainting the dead stones of Zanbaijin with filth, and the sound of the great storm's thunder carried with it the bleak echoes of Father Nurgle's laughter. Tamurkhan proclaimed his victory to the gods from a mound of heaped and rotting dead as the banners of the vanquished were cast down at his feet. Before his assembled army, he cried out his name and lineage, claiming to be the twisted-son of the Great Kurgan of old, now returning to claim his savage birthright to slay and conquer in the name of his god. He praised Father Nurgle who had brought him his blessings and declared his intention to claim the Throne of Chaos for his own. By right of conquest, the surviving warband leaders and Chaos champions owed him their fealty. Amongst them were many who, until this moment, had considered themselves implacable enemies, rivals for mortal power and divine favour, bitter foes who would rather perish than make common cause. Yet even these degenerates swore to fight as one in the name of Tamurkhan the Maggot Lord, agreeing to lay their feuds aside so long as he brought them victories and plunder in the battles to come. News of Tamurkhan's great victory spread, and soon the warriors of the Norhtmen tribes, wandering killers, unspeakable horrors and power-hungry cults began to flock to his banner as he departed from the charnel-bedecked ruins of Zanbaijin and headed again northward. In this manner the horde grew each day as it tramped across the steppes towards the foothills of the snow-topped Altayan Hills and tamurkhan's next goal. Gambit of the Faithless By the time that the moon had grown full and ebbed once more, the horde's column of march stretched almost from horizon to horizon and the flies and carrion crows clung about it as to a rotting carcass. Those that were loyal to Tamurkhan traveled at the head of the great horde, while those that kept divine loyalties of their own, or kept loyalty only to themselves, formed parasite columns that shadowed the main body of the force, keeping a wary distance, well aware that Nurgle's pestilence cared little for whose flesh it corrupted. Within a moon's passing, the horde reached the Altayan Hills and the roughly defined territory of a fierce confederacy of marauder tribes called the Dolgan. The Dolgan were one of the largest and most powerful of all the nations of the Kurgan peoples, renowned for their fractious nature and insular hatred of other Northmen. Tamurkhan desired greatly to bring these warriors into his cause, and particularly to add to his host the powerful war mammoths they were famed to ride into battle — huge creatures able to trample legions of lesser warrior underfoot and serve as living siege engines should the need arise. The overlord of the Dolgan tribes at that hour was the infamous sorcerer Sayl the Faithless, a malformed and treacherous creature whose many betrayals, murders and atrocities were as famed as his great powers as a seer and battle-wizard. Sayl had not been deaf to the tales that had already reached the Dolgan lands of Tamurkhan's victory and the favour the Chaos Gods had shown the Maggot Lord, and the size of the host he had already amassed to his banner. Having foreseen Tamurkhan's coming in the entrails of sacrifices, the scheming sorcerer sought not to meet the oncoming horde head on, for in that he saw at best a costly victory butmore likely a bitter defeat. Instead, Sarl planned to use Tamurkhan's ascendancy to his own advantage in some way. Despised by much of his own people, Sayl's grip on power among the Dolgan was a tenuous one and he was beset on all sides by many enemies, both within and without the Dolgan tribes. Sayl cunningly used his influence to send many of those who he suspected of disloyalty to harass and delay Tamurkhan's horde, and in doing so consigned them to their doom. Then, instead of meeting the horde in open battle as they ravaged across the Dolgan heartland, Sayl opted instead to parlay from a position of strength with the full intention of joining his forces to those of Tamurkhan, at least as long as it proved expedient to do pledged no oath of loyalty, only comradeship and common cause. Tamurkhan was satisfied that his goals are met, and his forces had not been squandered to gain what he desired. In this bargain Sayl, at first confident that he had gotten the better of the bargain, soon found himself caught within his own web of scheming, for while he had assumed Tamurkhan's intention was to lead his horde in a swift crashing attack against the southern lands directly (as had been the purpose of many of the prior incursions of Chaos), thus enabling Sayl to share in the glory and plunder and return soon in triumph to the Dolgan — he soon learned that Tamurkhan had other, stranger, plans in mind. Instead of turning south and west, towards the rich prizes of Kislev and the Empire, Tamurkhan led his horde — now numbering in the tens of thousands with the addition of those Dolgans Sayl had pledged to the cause — ever northwards on an erratic path into the harsh climate and horror-filled wastes on the very edge of the hellish storm of the Realm of Chaos itself. This caused consternation in the ranks of the newly formed host, and some began to tremulously whisper that Tanwrkhan sought to make war upon the Dark Gods themselves. These fears proved unfounded when Tamurkhan directed his column to the northeast. Those who knew anything about the Plaguelord then guessed his real aim; Tamurkhan went to the Gallow Tree, a place of nightmare and legend rivaling any other in the Chaos Waste. Edge of Darkness The Gallows Tree was a warped and horrific entity in its own right. Its tangled limbs were coiled and spread as if distorted in pain and held high above a rot-strewn swamp of vine-choked thorns, looming higher than a Temple's steeple above the desolate wastes. Foul and unutterable things dwelt beneath its canopy, the tree being a living gateway to the horrors beyond this plane of reality. It is said that within lies an unclean hag-daemon, shunned even by her own kind, who would bestow hidden secrets and dark prophecy on those who pleased her. Those howeve who failed to meet her standards of devotion to Father Nurgle ended their time as grisly adornments hanging from the boughs of the great tree above, food for maggots and crows alike after they had been subjected to a fate more terrible than a sane mind could conceive of. Tamurkhan brought his vast horde to the edge of the foetid mire that surronded the Gallows Tree, and none save the most devoted and insane disciples of Nurgle would venture further. It was Tamurkhan alone that braved the deadly paths to the foot of the Gallows Tree and stepped within. Left under the nominal command of Kayzk the Befouled, the nascent war host arrayed itself across the plain to await the judgement of the gods, isolating itself into wary camps, distrusting of their neighbours, even while brought together in divinely ordained cause. Long days passed, and while the horde remained encamped in the wastes, with the black and many-hued storm radiance from the Realm of Chaos rending the distant skies above them, the host's numbers continued to swell with warriors keen to taste battle and savour the rewards of victory. Some came from as far away as the lands of the Gharhar in the north and of the Avags in the east, while dozens of renowned Champions of Chaos born of many races, some from far beyond the wastes were led to the camp by strange visions and whispered promises. As the days went on Sayl, seeking to establish himself as a power in the horde, sent parties of Dolgan horsemen roaming the wastes, gathering together such reinforcements as they could, as well as stealing the lion's share of the forage available in the windswept and desolate land about them. Soon scouting forces were sent out by the various warlords of the host to guard against attacks by the warlike Dragon Ogres and other vile creatures that lived in the high mountains nearby, although sometimes when their parties failed to return, they rightly suspected each other rather than the appetites of the denizens of the wastes as the cause of their demise. Despite these conflicts, overall the horde rested and grew stronger as it awaited the return of Tamurkhan. But as its masters abscene dragged on into the passing of a moon, the monstrous and bestial members of the horde grew restive and ever hungrier with nought but erstwhile alies on which to dine. It would soon appear that the horde was ready to tear itself apart long before they reach lands to ravage as what wells that were dugged became so foul and exhausted that many die an ignominous death by thirst. Mark of Nurgle When Tamurkhan at last returned from the stygian depths of the Gallows Tree, it was met with the immediate rejoicing of the devotees of Nurgle within the horde, whilst its other elements gave the Champion a wary respect. All could plainly see that the Maggot Lord had been marked by the Chaos gods such was his transformation. The body of Sargath, which Tamurkhan had taken as his new vessel, was decayed beyond recognition and soon he needed a new host for the next conflict zone. He also returned with scrolls of power, containing the true names of Daemons and monstrous creatures, as well as an urn containing the poisoned waters of Nurgle's domain. When he returned to the horde, he called up a gathering of the warlords and wizards within his command and told his intentions to claim the legendary Throne of Chaos, which meant the dominion of the mortal world through which the victor shall stand upon a mountain of the dead and be ascended into daemonhood. By doing so, he wishes to surpass the legend of his own father, the Great Kurgan, and to those that joined him on his conquest, fame and renown shall sing of their deeds for thousand of years in the wastes. Thousands upon thousands of lives will perish before their blades in unholy prayer to the Dark Gods, and their names shall be carved into the skin of the world for the powers beyond to see. The hag gave the warlord hellish visions of what would be and what could be made real if one has the will to make it so; he had foreseen a mighty host of Chaos, as numberless as a locust swarm covering the mountains and fallen cities of the dead titans like a spreading contagion. He had seen mighty giants bow down before him in homage and the fires and hellish forges of Zharr-Naggrund beating out his name. He had seen the countless dead in their wake as a forest of spitted corpses, and verdant plain and barren waste alike watered in blood, and mighty rivers dammed by the bloated carcasses of the fallen. Above all else in his dark communion, he had seen a great city of iron and marble torn down, its walls crumbling into dust, fire running through its streets like water in flood. It would be here that the skies would open for him, boiling away all that was wholesome into pus-yellow and cancerous black, and he would be transfigured in glory. The city he knew, though he had never laid eyes upon it, for it lived and breathed in the tales of the Kurgan; it was a city in the heart of the domain of the old enemy of thrice-damned Sigmar's empire. Although none of those gathered in the horde — not least of all Tamurkhan himself, had ever set foot within the Empire of Man, all knew of it in story and oft-repeated legend. It had been a place of great and glorious battle for many generations, and many a powerful warlord had writ his saga there or died in the attempt. It was a land of deep forests and mighty cities, the size and strength of which could barely be conceived of by the men of the North to whom such things were an anathema given their nomadic, bellicose culture, their closest point of reference being ancient ruins, such as Zanbaijin, that lay here and there about the endless shifting landscape of the wastes. Tarnurkhan knew however that mere numbers and warlike strength alone had not been enough to crush the Empire in the past, for it was a mighty realm of steel and wizardry, blasting fire and bleak castles. They had long withstood the plethora of enemies that surrounded it. No matter his own arrogance and hubris, Tarnurkhan judged that to wrest this great prize for the glory of Chaos, he would need to match Sigmar's heirs power-for-power. He would need to counter their strong walls and towering fortresses with unholy and unstoppable engines of war, and overwhelm their powerful blackpowder firesotrm and battle wizardry with great beasts and savage daemons to whom such things were a mere distraction. Then would the superior martial skill and battle-lust of the scions of Chaos prove ascendant. Then would the Dark Gods' will be done and the Empire would be drowned in a sea of its own blood. Tamurkhan's plan of attack therefore would be an indirect route. He would not, as had so many Chaos lords of the past, assail the Empire from its north-eastern border, through Kislev and the strongest and most well-tried defences of the realm. Instead, as his visions foretold, his host would travel the length of the Mountains of Mourn, crushing all in their path and lining their way with charnel monuments to the Chaos Gods. From there they would then cross the Dark Lands and join with the forces of the Fire Lords of Zharr. They would cross the mountains and rip up into the Empire from the south, like a dagger striking at the heart up through the belly where the flesh was soft and weak. The journey would be long, but glorious in souls, battle and plunder, Tarnurkhan promised the warlords gathered before him, the weak would perish along the way, and the strong be made stronger; tempered by battle and blessed by the Dark Gods for their victories and the carnage inflicted in their name. A great roar of triumph and anticipation of the glory to come went up from the host, as each Warlord renewed their pledge of fealty to Tamurkhan. Only Sayl, withdrawn in the shadows remained silent, the Faithless One keeping his own council. Scouring of the Stone Lands There are more forces which govern the mortal world than mere intractable nature and reason, for the Winds of Magic hold dominion over all, and Magic is Chaos. So great was the horde, so dark the souls and bloody their intent that the invisible breath of magic was drawn to them, and found form in their collective desire. So it was that time and distance began to twist and blister in the barren stone lands where there was no will but the will of the horde, and within a single moon's passing, they had devoured a span of many hundreds of leagues, leaving it desolate and ashen in their wake, scoured of life and with none but the rot-glutted carrion vultures that circled-above to witness their passing. Hard by the north-eastern edge of the Shardback Mountains, where the rust-red hills rose for many leagues, the horde of Tamurkhan faced its first true battle. Here the feared Savage Orcs of the Withered Eye Tribe, frenzied and primitive, tainted by warpstone dust and shunned even by their own kind for their wanton savagery, stood before the horde. Unafraid although vastly outnumbered, these hulking greenskins streamed from the hills, their obsidian axes held high, braying and howling in their battle-lust, their malformed boars grunting and snarling while their shaman spat curses from behind crude copper masks. The Orc tribe and Tamurkhan's Marauder vanguard met in a single great annihilating clash and all was butchery and bloodshed. Barbed black-iron spears pierced Orc-hide, clouds of crude fetched arrows felled rank after rank of snarling warriors and screaming horses as fury was met with fury. Torn from the air, Gul Grog, the Orc Warboss that was master over the Withered Eye tribe and his ravaged wyvern mount fell from the sky like a tattered comet to the ground, streaming a trail of ichor, rent asunder by the iron claws of Corrasun, the Chaos Dragon of Orhbal Vipergut, and as their leader was smashed apart on the rocks, the Orcs wavered and faltered, just as Tamurkhan led the warriors of the main column into the fray. Like a storm-tide, the horde washed over the Orcs and ground them into the stony dust, and they were but the first of many armies to be destroyed by the horde of the Maggot Lord. Their battle won, the horde set upon the bodies of the fallen greenskins. The Orc flesh was tough and foul, but welcoming for such a large and hungry army, and the horde cast down the rough-hewn idols of the twin Orc gods of Gork and Mork and raised up huge mounds of clean-picked carcasses in their place, capped with icons'and symbols dedicating the slaughter to the Dark Gods of Chaos. After the horde's passing through the region, Tamurkhan's pestilential acolytes poisoned and tainted the wells with their own filth, thus ensuring death to any that drank from them in times to come. Doom at Ashhair The great horde carved its scourging path claim along the eastern flank of the great range of mountains, journeying further south than any within it had ever seen. Laying all before it unto waste, the horde pressed ever onwards at the urgings of its-tainted master who shouted rasping exhortations to his followers from atop his colossal mount. Beneath the fabled hanging ruins of many storied Urgriht they pissed — the rubble of the shattered towers of the Fortress of the Dawning of the World, circling and crashing together above their heads, while the cerulean lightning played between the broken sky-ruins in an endless dance of insane destruction. The horde carried on into the thorn-thick foothills of Shem'ash, where crooked-backed and goatish Beastmen and their grotesque Minotaur kin slunk from the dark places and*fell in with the horde: The Bray-shaman and Gor-chiefs of these twisted children of Chaos, long bitter enemies of both the Ogre Kixdoms of the mountains beyond and the Celestial Empire to the east, offered much lore of the lands before the horde and sought. the death of their enemies as a boon from their new lord, but the gods called to Tamurkhan and he would not stray from his path. Instead the Beastmen were swept along on Tamurkhan's course, but leapt upon any chance to raid their ancestral foes. So it was that while the main force of the horde tramped on southwards at the mountains edge, the Beastmen allied with the forces of Sayl the Faithless when his side-column *split from the horde's path to seek out the Tower of Ashshair, a watchtower and outpost offer Cathay amid the Stone Lands. Long had Sayl heard of the ancient power of the men beyond the Great Bastion and he hungered to plunder their secrets. Choosing to seek his own path for a while, he led his followers in an assault against them. The jade-green tower, a thing as much of magic as stone, sat high and all but unassailable upon a jagged promontory of rock overlooking the ancient Silk Road that led from the gates of the Great Bastion to the south-east, and the inhospitable mountain passes of the Ogre Kingdoms to the west. From here the servants of the Eternal Dragon Emperor surveyed the great road and kept watch for signs and portents of woe and threats from distant lands, and so they were well forewarned of the terrors arrayed against them. The warriors of the East, oath-sworn and stalwart, stood firm behind the ramparts of the tiered fortifications that encircled the outpost beneath the tower, lined as they were with snarling-mouthed bronze cannon and deadly stone-fleshed temple dogs and crow-men, ready to crush the foe in their granite claws. Wary of the arts and devices of this unfamiliar enemy, Sayl's twisted tongue worked upon the chieftains of the Beastmen and convinced them to commence the assault with a night attack — a tactic at which they were expert and well-suited. The Faithless One's own forces, notably including a dozen war mammoths he had worked loose from the main column for the attack, he planned to keep in reserve until a gap in the defences was breached for them to exploit. From the beginning the attack went awry for the forces of Chaos, and as the braying, savage tide of Gors and Ungors, Minotaurs and Spawn erupted from the darkness, the skies above them were riven by explosions of lambent green and ice white light as enchanted fireworks turned the night into a rippling phantasm of spectral figures which turned and roared in crazed display. Cannon spat forth clusters of bronze javelins which showered through the onrushing Beastmen, accompanied by wave after wave of barbed crossbow bolts which felled hundreds in mere moments. The fury of the Beasts of Chaos however did not falter, and within minutes the barbarous tide, loping and running with phenomenal speed had reached the outer wall, and spurred on by the whips and cries of their Beastlords and Bray-Shaman, scores began to scale the high wall of the outer bastion, their clawed hands and crude picks finding purchase, augmented by the sudden rampant growth of twisted black vines mutated by the incantations of the shaman. At the outer gate, hulking, multi-armed Ghorgon pounded at the gates with petrified tree-trunks as hard as iron, only to fall back maimed and dying as Dragon-blooded Shugengan Wizards hurled blasts of white fire and blizzards of murderous ice-shards against them. Heedless of their losses, the Brayherd pressed on, and by sheer reckless fury overwhelmed the outer wall, spilling over it as a storm-driven tide breaks over a levy wall. The warriors of the East stood their ground, though vastly outnumbered, their emerald green back-banners flickering in the gaudy light from above, their long blades of thousand-folded iron weaving and cutting a dance through the rough flesh and snarling jaws of the cloven-hoofed ones. But it was not enough, and one by one the Cathayan Bannermen fell. The fortified compound beneath the tower was taken, the Brayherd screaming and howling its triumph and gorging itself frenziedly on the flesh of the dead. Sayl the Faithless watched on from atop his war mammoth mount, but no matter the entreatments of his Dolgan chieftains and the Exalted Champions that followed his banner, Sayl held them back and would not attack. The warriors and marauders muttered and grew angry at the glory denied them, the victory they were forced to watch given to the hands of others — to the Beastnien no less! But they held back yet, for Sayl had promised to flay the souls of any that defied him to the reapers of the void, and such threats all knew were far from idle in nature, and so the Dolgans kept their place grudgingly and did not rush to reinforce the attack. And so it was that Sayl felt the twisted skein of magic being, drawn tight and the Atheric winds, drawn in an ever intensifying vortex by the blood spilled before him, pulled into a deadly pattern by a will other than his own. Suddenly, at the height of the Beastmen's bloody revelry in the fortress compound at the foot of the tower, the glowing phantasms in the skies above were snuffed out into deepest black, a black into which a single, bright, burning star was born. Screaming aloud, Sayl and the other Chaos sorcerers present sought frantically to abjure the doom that was about to befall the battlefield, but to no end. Sayl knowing bitterly that even as he tried to disrupt the magics that had been wielded, he had little chance of undoing what had been set in motion. The comet fell from the heavens like a speeding bolt of blue-white fire, the burning rune of Celestial magic graven upon its flanks in flickerinOtarlight kr all with the art to see it. It struck dead-center on the fortress compound with a roaring blast that shook the earth and a blinding flash of power that caused even the war mammoths to buck and bellow in pain. Inside the fortress all was carnage, as scores of Beastmen and Minotaurs were incinerated in an instant, gone to ash and dust with only their shadows blasted against the walls to mark the sudden agony of their passing. The surviving Brayherd reeled, blinded arid burned in the wake of the thunderbolt from the heavens, but were given no respite as the baleful counter-attack was launched. Strange creatures of living stone swam down the jade walls of the tower and up through the rocky ground as if it were water, and the Beastmen became their prey. Encircled and trapped, the Brayherd's savagery was soon overwhelmed, and Sayl watched on in grim fascination with his witch's sight as great Minotaurs were dragged bellowing and helpless into the air by living statues of onyx -- neither raven nor man in shape — and gutted by glittering talons, while fresh Bannermen, their long blades and wickedly curved polearms flashing poured from the tower gates and into the fray. Bitter and angry that his prize was so readily slipping from his grip, Sayl raised mighty magics of his own and sent hurricane winds and spiteful arcs of lighting to vex the enemy and blast and scatter its winged avengers, but could do little more than cover the surviving Beastmen's route from the walls. With a scornful sweep of his clawed hand, Sayl signaled the retreat from the tower, and his Dolgans, resentful but cowed by the hurricane storm that now blanketed the tower unabated, obeyed him. The Dark Road Taken A Harvest of Titans Source * Tamurkhan: The Throne of Chaos ** : pg. 6 - 13 ** : pg. 14 - 19 ** : pg. 23 - 26 ** : pg. 14 - 19 Category:Chaos Characters Category:Nurgle Category:T